Pieter van der Zaag Prof. dr. ir.

Professor of Integrated Water Resources Management

Biography

Pieter van der Zaag is professor of integrated water resources management at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in Delft, The Netherlands, and also holds a professorship at Delft University of Technology. He chairs the Water Management Group.

Pieter has worked in Africa and Mexico from 1982 to 2003. He has special interests in agricultural water management, water allocation issues in catchment areas and in the management of transboundary river basins, on which he has published widely. Pieter is fascinated by the dynamic relationship between biophysical and social processes when managing water, and in understanding patterns of cooperation over water.

The following are Pieter’s current main research interests:

The role of inequality and heterogeneity in enduring water institutions

Harnessing water by smallholders from nature-based storage in (semi-)arid regions in Africa

Water allocation tools in river basins – developing dynamic water value maps

Water allocation in large irrigation systems – supporting canal operators with mobile model predictive control and earth observation techniques.

Pieter has a track record of formulating and guiding major interdisciplinary research and capacity building projects, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

He is member of the governing board of WaterNet in Southern Africa, associate editor of Water Policy, member of the editorial board of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. From 2018 to 2018 he chaired the Netherlands National IHP Committee.

Pieter van der Zaag studied irrigation at Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands. From 1987 to 1989 he was based in Mexico. He received his PhD degree in 1992. From 1993 he coordinated a joint research programme between the University of Zimbabwe and Wageningen Agricultural University.

In 1997 he joined IHE Delft and was seconded to the Department of Civil Engineering, again at the University of Zimbabwe. The major activity involved the setting up of a new MSc programme in ‘Water Resources Engineering and Management’.

From 1999 to 2002, Pieter was the interim manager of WaterNet, a regional network aiming to build and strengthen regional capacity for the integrated management of water resources in the Southern African region through education, training and research.

In 2002 Pieter van der Zaag was appointed Professor of Water Resources Engineering and Management at the University of Zimbabwe. In 2004 he was appointed Professor of Integrated Water Resources Management at IHE Delft. From 2012 to 2015 he was the head of the newly formed Department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance.

The Water, Peace and Security Partnership - Enabling preventive action for water induced conflict is a pilot initiative to test whether it is possible to anticipate water-related human insecurity using and combining novel data and source. IHE Delft (leads), World Resources Institute WRI, Deltares, The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies HCSS, Wetlands International and International Alert (DGIS funded, 2018-2019). See https://www.un-ihe.org/news/water-peace-and-security-partnership.

Accounting for Nile Waters: connecting investments in large scale irrigation to gendered reallocations of water and labor in the Eastern Nile basin; with IWMI, Hydraulics Research Centre Sudan, University of Khartoum, Forum for Social Studies Ethiopia, Research Institute for Sustainable Environment - American University in Cairo, National Water Resources Centre Egypt, Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office ENTRO (CGIAR funded – WLE Nile Basin and East Africa Focal Region). Preliminary findings are posted at http://nilewaterlab.org.

MozambiqueMobile Water Monitoring in Mozambique - a cooperation project of ARA-Sul and Dutch partners; implemented with MobileCanalControl (lead) (Partners voor Water funded)

ZambeziPower2Flow: Hydropower-to-environment water transfers in the Zambezi basin; in collaboration with Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, WaterNet in Southern Africa and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (UPaRF funded; 2009-2013)

PungweWater Planning tools to support Water Governance in Mozambique (WATPLAG) - a cooperation project of ARA-Centro and Dutch partners; implemented with FutureWater (lead) and Water Board Hunze and Aa’s (Partners voor Water funded)

Managing risk, mitigating drought and improving water productivity in the water scarce Limpopo Basin; implemented by WaterNet (CP17; CGIAR Challenge Programme for Water and Food; 2004-2009); see the research page of www.waternetonline.org

Recent and on-going capacity building projects

MozambiqueCapacity Development at Agencia de Desenvolvimento do Vale do Zambeze and seven educational institutions in complementary IWRM Education and Training, Mozambique; implemented with TU Delft (lead), Wageningen University, KIT and Eduardo Mondlane University (Nuffic funded, 2017-2020)

IndiaDeveloping Basin Plans for the Chambal and Sindh river basins - a Taylor-Made Training programme for the Water Resources Department of Madhya Pradesh, India (World Bank funded)

South AfricaCapacity Building for Integrated Water Resources Management in South Africa; with Cape Peninsula University of Technology and University of the Western Cape; implemented with Wageningen University (lead), ITC, IRC and Pegasys (Nuffic funded)

EthiopiaCapacity building in Integrated River Basin Management for Higher Education Institutions to support emerging River Basin Organisations; with Addis Ababa University, Wageningen University, MetaMeta and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Nuffic funded; 2009-2012). See http://www.universitywatersectorpartnership.org/

MekongAnticipating and resolving flood issues, differences and disputes in the Lower Mekong Basin – a capacity building programme for the Mekong River Commission (MRC funded; 2008-2009)

GhanaCapacity Building for Sustainable Development of Water Resources and Environmental Sanitation in Ghana and the Sub-Region; with KNUST (Nuffic funded; 2005-2009)

Publications

Recent Journal Papers

Kiptala, J., B. Laa, T. Hessels and P. van der Zaag, 2018c. An assessment of the value of an African landscape. The case of the Mara Basin, Kenya. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 107, 71–85 [10.1016/j.pce.2018.09.009]

Gebremicael, T., Y.A Mohamed, P. van der Zaag and E.Y Hagos, 2018. Quantifying longitudinal land use change from land degradation to rehabilitation in the headwaters of Tekeze-Atbara Basin, Ethiopia. Science of the Total Environment 622-623, 1581-1589 [doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.034]

Tesfaye, A., R. Brouwer, P. van der Zaag and W. Negatu, 2016. Assessing the costs and benefits of improved land management practices in three watershed areas in Ethiopia. International Soil and Water Conservation Research 4, 20–29 [doi:10.1016/j.iswcr.2016.01.003]

Nyatsanza, F., S. Graas and P. van der Zaag, 2015. The impact of dynamic environmental flow releases on hydropower production in the Zambezi river basin. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association 51(4), 1029-1042 [doi:10.1111/jawr.12280]